Gold Dust Lounge: Your lease is up

ON SAN FRANCISCO

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, March 17, 2012

Photo: Mike Kepka

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On day the the owners of the Gold Dust Lounge were supposed to leave, Lee Housekeeper, spokesperson for the Bovis family, announces to a full house, that the Gold Dust Lounge is not going anywhere for now on March 10, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif.
Last December the owners of the Gold Dust lounge, at 247 Powell Street, received a notice from their landlord, the Handlery Hotel, to be out in 90 days to make way for new retail. After nearly 47 years running the bar, the Bovis brothers are not ready to go without a fight. less

On day the the owners of the Gold Dust Lounge were supposed to leave, Lee Housekeeper, spokesperson for the Bovis family, announces to a full house, that the Gold Dust Lounge is not going anywhere for now on ... more

Photo: Mike Kepka

Gold Dust Lounge: Your lease is up

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I can sum up controversy over closing the Gold Dust Lounge in four words.

The lease is up.

Loyal patrons wish it weren't. People in the Bovis family, which has been renting the space since 1966, wish they'd read their agreement more closely. Preservationists wish there weren't so many formula retail stores on Powell Street. And I wish I still weighed 167 pounds.

The lease is up.

In most places that would be the end of the story. But here it is just the first chapter. Supporters have pulled in Tony Bennett, Chronicle columnist Herb Caen and Janis Joplin. (Joplin, it is said, sang "in front" of the Gold Dust, then bought drinks there.)

I don't get it. Up Powell just off Union Square, the Gold Dust is small, gritty and unremarkable - although often crowded. The drinks are cheap, which is good, but the idea that it represents the deep inner soul of San Francisco is a reach.

But it is too late now. You will be astonished to learn that some have taken up the Gold Dust closure as a jumping-off point for other causes. Supervisor Christina Olague, a past president of the Planning Commission, says her objection is philosophical.

"It raises a lot of questions about the downtown area," she said. "Why are we welcoming more formula retail in an area that already has Forever 21 and H&M and five Walgreens?"

OK. But if the concern is that there are too many retail stores around Union Square, that horse left the barn some time ago. The area is chock-a-block with retail stores. That's why it is packed with tourists, many of whom, I suspect, are the real customers at the Gold Dust.

The idea that San Francisco residents regularly fight their way through crowds around the cable car turnaround to make the Gold Dust their regular watering hole seems far-fetched. So does the claim from the tenants' lawsuit, that it is "one of the last welcoming places to buy a drink in the Union Square neighborhood."

Actually, you could go around the corner to a real San Francisco institution, Lefty O'Doul's, which is also operated by the Bovis family. There are plenty of places to buy a drink in the area.

But that is just an example of the runaway hyperbole. The lawsuit says that Bennett sang "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" for the first time at the Venetian Room. Then they add he also "occasionally" dropped by the Gold Dust, where "some say on different occasions he left his heart."

As for Caen, a copy of a 1996 column of his has been displayed outside the door since he wrote it. Caen describes a boozy evening when he had a nightcap at the Gold Dust, then went down to the Marina Green, where he found himself so intoxicated he fell over. Not exactly an image a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist would cherish.

The crux of the lawsuit is that Handlery changed the terms of the lease several times and that James and Tasios Bovis, the renters, didn't realize what they were signing. That's a shame, if true, but they did sign it. There are hurt feelings all around, but the courts are going to settle that.

The issue now is whether the Gold Dust is an irreplaceable part of San Francisco history. A group applied for historical landmark status, and in what I thought was a very wise opinion, the Planning Department said that while a case could be made that the "physical features" of the lounge should be preserved, there was no reason the space couldn't be repurposed "for another use, such as retail."

The debate is likely to continue, but at the end of the day it's a bar, one of many. It's not historic.

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